Six Ways to Protect Your Fruit Harvest From Pests and Sun Rays
Every year my stone fruit trees produce a comforting amount of cherries, plums and peaches. But by the time I have to harvest, 90% of the crop is already gone. It’s like I can hear the birds laughing at me. For every perfect strawberry, there are four that are attacked by pillbugs before they even ripen. Our fruit is very susceptible to local foraging wildlife, insects and even sunburn. Here are all the ways you can protect your fruit so you’ll have it on hand when it’s time to harvest.
Cover your plants with gauze
In order to produce fruit, pollination is necessary. But once pollination occurs and your trees or shrubs begin to bear unripe fruit, you can cover them to protect them. If it is a whole tree, you can wrap it in a veil, and for individual fruits you can use gauze bags specifically for this purpose. Gauze allows light to pass through, but does not allow insects or birds to pass through. I prefer bags because they are less likely to get caught by pollinators or birds. I started using bags for harvesting grapes because I found that it made picking them much easier. You simply pulled out the bags that already had grapes in them. Using this method, you can also protect your perfect figs or apples. I’m very happy with the success so far and wash the bags at the end of the season.
Kaolin clay on your fruit trees
You can prepare a kaolin solution (a harmless purified clay powder) and spray it on your fruit trees. Clay covers the fruit with a harmless layer that repels pests by camouflaging the fruit. Smart insects that can still find the fruit will be more busy cleaning these clay particles off themselves and will eventually give up and leave. The benefits don’t end there: kaolin also protects fruits from sunburn. This method is more labor intensive as you will have to spray it once a week to create a suitable layer of clay. Since this method can repel apple maggot, plum curculio, codling moth, European apple sawfly, cucumber beetle, oriental fruit moth, apple crested codling moth, white apple leafhopper, and pear leafhopper, I’m going to try it for the first time. next year on apple and pear trees that bear too much fruit to cover with cheesecloth.
Distract and contain strawberries
When insects aren’t trying to get into strawberries from below, birds are trying to get to them from above. Birds are easily distracted by strawberry-sized red rocks, colored the same red, scattered around your berry patch. Every year I am amazed at how effective this method is without requiring much effort. However, preventing errors is a little more difficult. Pill bugs can be repelled with diatomaceous earth (finely ground plankton), but although it is organic, I try to avoid using it as it can also harm beneficial insects in the soil. To fix the problem, I resorted to lifting the berries. Every spring, as soon as the berries begin to sprout, I add a fair amount of straw to the bed so that the berries lay on top of the straw when they ripen. I also started planting most of my berries in vertical pots so they hang rather than sit on the ground. These two methods have significantly increased my fruit yield.
Shade fabric to avoid sunburn
In recent years, sunburn has become a more serious problem due to heat domes and plants that are not prepared for such prolonged direct sunlight and heat. The most effective way to protect your plants is to create an overstory and understory so that your berries (the understory) are protected by the trees above (the overstory). If you can’t do that, it’s time to create trellises or temporary structures on which to hang shade cloth . This UV blocking fabric is breathable but blocks some UV radiation from the sun (it has varying degrees of UV blocking). It does not harm the fruit in any way as long as it is not on the fruit, but hangs above it, creating a shadow.
Plant sacrificial fruits
Although I have a lot of blueberry bushes, I started with one large one and made an agreement with the birds. “You get the top; I get everything else.” Now there are enough berry plants on my plot, and I have something to share. Planting native berries at pollination stations will distract local wildlife populations.
Traps and beneficial insects
Each type of fruit has natural predators and they are likely to set traps for these insects. Look for them in your nursery – they are usually cardboard, sticky and contain a special pheromone. They can be hung next to the fruit and changed from time to time. You can also consider beneficial insects , where you buy predators of the problem pest, introduce them to your garden, and hope they want to stay.